Grovetown officials are on the defensive after terminating their new police chief Tuesday.

Former Chief Gary Jones was fired as the director of the Grovetown Department of Public Safety.

“Well friends the attorney for Grovetown and the City Administrator just called me up to City Hall to tell me that my services are no longer needed as the Director of Public Safety,” Jones posted on his personal Facebook page at about 11:30 a.m. “I asked why and no response was given.”

Columbia County authorities are looking for a man who grabbed a teen girl’s buttocks in Walmart last month.

An Evans man told deputies that he and his 13-year-old daughter were shopping in the party aisle of the store in Evans at about 4 p.m. on April 25. The girl said a stranger approached her and groped her buttocks, according to a Columbia County Sheriff’s Office incident report. The girl told her father immediately.

The man described the stranger as a white man wearing shorts and a purple shirt.

The following accounts were taken from Columbia County Sheriff’s Office incident reports:

Man is victim of extortion

An Evans man told authorities Thursday that he was the target of an extortion scheme.

The 34-year-old man said that someone was trying to extort money. He said he spoke to a woman named Sonia Anderson via Skype the previous evening. The man said it was the first time he’d talked to her and he didn’t know her previously.

A Columbia County sheriff’s deputy who was fired for violating his oath of office, was referring potential clients to personal injury lawyers who paid him to work as an investigator for cases, according to sheriff’s investigative files.

Work began in mid-March on the site of Hyatt Place, on three acres on Mason McKnight Jr. Parkway behind Sprint Foods, just off Interstate 20. The utilities have been installed and foundation work should soon begin on the upscale service hotel, said John Engler, the vice president of local development firm McKnight Properties.

The four-story hotel is planned to include 112 guest rooms, a fitness center and outdoor pool.

Two buildings on Washington Road in Martinez are being demolished to make way for a Jim Hudson Lexus dealership.

An old NAPA Auto Parts store and Martinez Masonic Lodge in the 3400 block of Washington Road are being razed so the dealership can relocate to a larger facility that will be built at the corner of Pleasant Home and Washington roads, where the dealer’s used-car center is located, said Bill Gibbs, the general manager at Jim Hudson Lexus.